It’s 9:00 AM. An employee opens her inbox. The usual spate of ‘Join our webnar and you’ll see amazing results…’ and ‘Our software is the bestest and the mostest..,.’
Another click
and someone’s heart slides into the queue. it’s a wife, distraught, anguished.
Her husband has cancer. She may lose him.
‘No. It can’t be!’ Her very being cries out. But she knows, in that secret place in her
soul, that she fearfully tiptoes into in the darkness of the night, that it may
be true.
He was scheduled for a stem cell transplant. It could save his life. He had already begun the pre-treatment for
the procedure. They had dared to share a smile. A smile of hope. Then that flutter of hope was cruelly squashed. The donor cancelled. An extreme rarity but it happened to them.
Why? She knows not. She knows only that doom has reentered their lives and taken over. In a poignant email, she reached out to Ezer Mizion. She’s a Sephardic Jew. Perhaps, perhaps, there is another match. Perhaps the transplant can still take place. But the oncology clinic has already been in touch with Ezer Mizion. And…there is none.
They still sit near the phone waiting for it to ring. That flutter of hope still alive. Maybe today. Or
tomorrow. Their son’s graduation is in a few months. Maybe…and so they wait.
Hiding their fears from each other. From themselves. She chuckles at a funny
story she read. He asks her what is so funny. She tells him and they laugh
together while inside the searing pain tears apart their very souls. That feathery fantasy that consumes their every moment…that dream of another perfect match. Is it just a
dream, a crutch of comfort to support them in this most horrendous time of their lives? Or does it have any grounding in actuality?
A recent Ezer Mizion campaign brought in a large amount of funding. All of you, our dear friends and
supporters, donated so generously. Each dollar will be used to test new potential donors. Each day more test results will come in. Each will be entered into the database thus increasing the current total of 1.2 million more and more and more. And then one day soon, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, the phone will ring. Their ephemeral hopes will be
validated. Speechless in disbelief, unable to express in words the glorious joy
of the moment, they’ll hug each other, they’ll cry, their hearts will sing. Together. For many years to come. Together. And you’ll sing along with them.
Another life to add to the thousands already saved. It was just a check in the
mail but it came with a piece of your heart. And it will have helped to heal
their broken hearts. It will have saved a life. Since the establishment in 1998,Ezer Mizion’s Bone Marrow Donor Registry has handled thousands of search
requests from dozens of transplant centers in 48 countries around the world.
Ezer Mizion’s Bone Marrow Registry has facilitated 5,231 stem cell transplants, saving
the lives of patients throughout the world and sparing thousands of families
untold grief.
